Gajo de la Yuca

Sorry it has taken me so long to post!!! The semester is going by so fast, and I can hardly keep up with life...but then again I also took a week out to go to the beach and not worry about homework or school, just enjoyed life.

So now that I am back to reality, and things have slowed down, I want to tell you about my immersion experience in the campo. Campos are little rural communities that are often very poor, and usually pretty contained. The campo we went to "Gajo de la Yuca" was in the mountains and extremely isolated from other campos and from the city. There were about thirty families living in the community, and about 40 kids. The kids attended school at the church, where instead of mass, there is usually what the locals call a Celebracion, or a prayer service, because there is hardly ever a priest around to say mass. Many of the families there are involved in agriculture, growing their produce in the fincas, or fields, and driving into the city a few days a week to try to sell what they produced. It's a tough life for the Dominicans living here, but it is what they know.

We were in the campo for ten days, staying with families and helping to build an aqueduct from the outskirts of the campo into the center so that the community could have a more reliable source of water. While we were there, I stayed with a young family of three. My campo dad, Felix, was 32, and my mom, Yecenia, was 16. I also had a little brother, Luis, who was two years old, and rather than calling me Rebecca, which is the name I went by in the campo, he called me Tia, Spanish for Aunt. I loved that this little two year old boy, who hardly knew me at all, almost immediately saw me as part of his family. He knew that I wasn't his real sister, but yet he started calling me Tia without anyone telling him to. That was one of the best feelings in the world. I felt so loved by this family, and I truly felt like they were my own.

Living in the campo was definitely a new experience for me, and offered some challenges, the most daunting of which was speaking Spanish. I did not have that much confidence in my language abilities, and I was worried that the Dominican Campo Spanish would just be too fast and accented for me to understand. But it turns out I did not have to be so concerned. My dad in the campo was very patient with my ability. He spoke slowly, and only used words that he thought I could understand. He took his time speaking to me, as difficult as it must have been to take the time to speak slowly and clearly so I, an American girl living in their house for a week, could understand him. As time went on, it became easier and easier to understand him, and others in the campo. I got more and more accustomed to hearing the accents, and listening for the specific words that I know. By the end of the week I was much more confident in my ability, and I had acquired a few more vocabulary words as well!!

One thing I really enjoyed in the campo is the relaxed atmosphere. In the campo, things happen you are ready...they are on Dominican time. Wake up when the roosters start crowing and the sun comes up. Go to bed at night when the sun goes down, because there is an apagon (blackout), and there is no light or electricity. Take breaks from the workday when you get tired, and talk and enjoy your time working with the people around you. Time was not an issue, they had all the time in the world to get to where they needed to be. On a daily basis, I woke up in the morning when the light began to come into my room (often before my alarm went off) and I went to the latrine, got dressed, and then when I was ready, my mom brought me the strong Dominican coffee that we had about four times a day. I sat on the front porch to enjoy my coffee, looking out over the banana and plantain trees in the valley below, while the chickens roamed around my feet waiting for their breakfast. Then I put on the rubber boots that my campo dad lent me because it was so muddy, and headed to breakfast at Juana's house with the rest of my group. We had all our meals together at the house where our teachers were staying. After breakfast we headed out to work.

The workday consisted of digging the hole for the tanque (tank) that would hold 60,000 gallons of water when it was finished. While some of us worked on the tank, the rest of us worked on the zanjas, the trenches that would bring the tubes from the tank at the top of the mountain to the center of the campo so that it was accessible to everyone in the community. We worked alongside of all the Dominicans in the community, using the picks to break up the ground, and the shovels to dig into the trench to make sure that it gets deep enough. We worked about 7 days, and in that seven days, we finished building the tank, took the trenches the whole 2.5 Km into the center of the community, and put the tubes in place and got water flowing to the community. I can't begin to describe the feeling of accomplishment I had when we completed the project, and on my way back to my house Sunday night, I was able to stop by the spraying water and rinse my feet. We brought water to this community so that they do not have to walk all the way down to the river to get it during their drought seasons. It was such a great achievement that I loved sharing with the Dominicans we were working with.

Although the end result was amazing, the work was not always easy. I was glad to jump in and do what I could, and I definitely showed the Dominicans that I could work very hard, it was really hard work!! And it was so nice to come home to a bucket shower. My mom always had the bucket already filled, ready to go. Bucket showers are one of the most relaxing things ever, especially when it was raining outside! Sometimes it was cold if it had been raining all day, and the water was not warm either, but it was so nice to just pour a bucket of water over yourself after a long and sweaty day of work. Then on those cold days, my mom would have a cup of coffee waiting for me when I was dressed. I would sit and spend time talking with my mom and dad, and playing with my little brother, who sometimes had clothes on, but sometimes didn't! He was a free spirit:)

Dinner at Juana's was something I always looked forward to. A lot of the women in the community came to her house to help get ready for the meals, and were so excited for us to come enjoy what they made for us. They would go through so much trouble to make the little food they had to prepare for us as nice as they could. Although there weren't a whole lot of options, they did what they could to make sure that we enjoyed our meals. Dinner was also wonderful because the whole community always seemed to be there. All our families would walk us to dinner, and then wait outside for us, socializing and enjoying each others company, eating the leftovers that Juana made for them. It was then usually dark by the time we headed for home. When we got home, if there were lights, we would sit and talk and watch a movie or telenovela (soap opera) if it was on. When the lights were out, my dad lit an oil lamp, and we sat and talked. Sometimes visitors would come over, and sometimes it would just be me and my family sitting around the oil lamp talking. And then usually, after talking for a while it would be time for bed. It was a long days work, and we would be headed out to work again tomorrow so we all needed to get a good nights sleep.

One of my favorite nights in the campo, we didn't go right home after dinner. It was Hannah, one of my friends, birthday, so her campo family had a party at her house after dinner. It was Sunday night, and we would be leaving on Tuesday. We had lived and worked in the campo for eight days already, and had become a part of the community. All the workers that we had been spending time with, and all our families came to the party, and we were all crammed into this little living room dancing Bachata and Merengue until the truck battery that housed the radio died. It was the best goodbye any of us could have asked for, and it was wonderful to be a part of such a great community. 

Walking back in the mud that night after dancing for about three hours straight, I knew that this would be an experience I would never forget, and I would never forget the people that I met there. I would never forget my mom and dad, that gave their home to me, even though they did not have much to give. I would never forget my brother, who really saw me as part of his family, and before he went to bed every night, asked for his father's blessing, then his mother's, and then mine. I would never forget the old man that I saw working every day, who was working before everyone got there, and continued working, even when everyone else took a break. I would never forget the hospitality that everyone showed us, and how they literally gave us everything they had, although they will never know how much they truly gave me, and how much I have to thank them for. I felt so much love and kindness in that week, and I knew what we were doing there was a good thing, and that it would forever change me for the better.